


Let the rain come down, it masks our screams

by the_authors_exploits



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, sam tries so hard please give this boy a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:45:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7143374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_authors_exploits/pseuds/the_authors_exploits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has a busy day, and he returns to an empty orphanage</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the rain come down, it masks our screams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [destielydia](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=destielydia).



> Sam: 14, Nate: 9

“It’s two weeks late, hon.”

Sam taps a beat out on the counter, quietly, because this is a library and he’s in enough trouble as it is. “Ok, I know that, my brother wasn’t done with it; see, he needed a new notebook to take note in before I could return the book and I couldn’t get him a notebook until last week, and that left him a…” he realizes the elderly lady is not interested in his life story so he takes a deep breath. “Look, I can’t pay the late fee right now.”

“Well then I’m going to have to ask you to hand in your library card, sir.”

“Really?”

The lady thins her lips and glances down at the computer screen, putting her horn rimmed glasses on the tip of her nose. “This is your fourth penalty; it’s either you pay all your late fees or you turn in your card.”

He drums against the counter again. “I just…I can’t do that, I can’t turn in the card, Nathan…” he pats his pockets, digs out his wallet. “I can pay…half the fee right now, okay? It’s just, his birthday is coming up and I’ve gotta buy him a present, and I can’t turn in the card, lady, okay. This is his favorite place, okay, and I just, I—I…”

The elderly lady smells like grandma perfume, and she’s wearing way too much lace around the collar of her shirt, the cuffs of her sleeves. It brushes her cheeks when she takes her glasses off. “I’m sorry—” she doesn’t sound it. “—but it’s the policy; either pay, or revoke your library privileges.”

Sam groans and turns around, huffing; he looks back at the old lady, makes a show of opening his wallet, mumbling the whole time, and takes out a wad of bills. He counts them out, stacks them neatly, and—because his mother taught him to also be polite and respectful—hands them over to the lady with a, somewhat, strained smile. “There you go, ma’am; debt has been paid.”

She takes the money, giving him an equally strained smile, counts it out and nods. “Thank you, young man, you have a nice day.”

With that he’s dismissed and he slinks out of the building, several ten dollar bills lighter; but the plastic of the library card is still slotted in his wallet and he knows Nathan won’t know, won’t realize, what he’s done or how close they came to losing their one safe place. But that doesn’t matter; what matters is Nathan will be happy, and all Sam has to do to get his money back is take a few high end jobs within the next two days before Nathan’s birthday comes up.

He looks up at the sky; the clouds are closing in. It’s going to rain, and he just had to leave the orphanage without a jacket or umbrella. He huffs, stuffs his hands in his jean pockets, and begins slinking down the road; he’s gotta find a boss, and fast. Last week, Angelo told him to not come back for another month; fine, then. Infiltrating a rival gang was way too stressful anyway, and the pay was shit.

Nicole, or as she preferred Nickie, might have something, but she was on the other side of town and Sam didn’t have money for a bus pass; walking wouldn’t get him there fast enough to do a high paying job, and he’d probably get socked in rain water.

Now Kyle…Kyle was closer, and probably had a slew of small jobs for Sam to do: selling drugs on the street corner, helping to sort through a shipment, organizing the armory… And he was right around the corner from the orphanage; decision made, Sam quickens his pace.

The apartment building, an operation run only to disguise the drug running from the back end, looks empty, quiet, save for the man on the front sidewalk; hands firmly shoved in his jacket pockets and a cigarette hanging from his lips, he looks like a casual renter just out for a smoke before the rain comes. Sam knows better; he takes long strides across the street and hops up besides the man.

“Frankie!”

The man, just barely pass his twenty-fourth birthday, nods at the teenager. “What’s going on, man?”

“Kyle got any jobs lined up?”

Frankie squints at him, freckled nose wrinkling, and tosses his head. “Dunno, don’t think so.” He tips his head to the side, suspicious. “Why?” he drawls.

Sam shrugs. “Ahh, just wonderin’; I could go for a job or two.” Or three or four or five.

“Mmhm.” Frankie throws the butt of his cigarette on the ground and stomps on it. “You’ve been taking a lotta jobs lately; anything you wanna share, Sammy boy?”

Sam purses his lips; no one calls him Sammy. Well, except Nathan when he’s begging for something. “Nahh, nah, it’s cool.”

Frankie hums. “That so?”

Sam nods.

“Why don’t I believe you?”

It sounds threatening, to any passerby who notices the withdrawal shakes in Frankie’s hands, the slight twitch of his ear that’s more a compulsion than an intimidation tactic, the way he steps forward into Sam’s personal space. Sam doesn’t feel threatened though, though he won’t say anything of Nathan; he’s tried his best to keep Nathan separated from this part of his life. “There’s just something coming up; I gotta… Look a new HotWheels came out and I’ve gotta—”

Frankie barks a laugh, nearly head butts him when he bends over in laughter. “What are you, twelve?”

There was more he had planned on getting Nathan, saving for a few months now; his own books, a new set of pens, a couple extra notebooks, maybe a new sweater… But the HotWheels was on the top of the list, being Nathan’s favorite thing on the planet at the moment. “Well, uh, the kid is nine so.”

Frankie wipes his eyes, wheezing out a few more chuckles. “What-what kid?”

Sam bites his lip; he doesn’t want to say. “Just some kid.”

“Sammy boy,” Frankie claps him on the back. “You don’t do shit for just some kid; haven’t we taught you anything?”

“…It’s for my brother…”

Frankie recoils. “What?”

“My…” Sam flaps a hand, disappointed in himself for being so desperate to speak Nathan’s name here, in this place. “My brother, Nathan, he…it’s his birthday coming up and I don’t have enough money for his present, alright? Happy?”

Frankie’s jaw is on the ground and Sam gives him a moment to collect himself before turning to go.

“Look, just forget it; I’ll go talk to Nickie or something.”

“Nickie? Kid!” Frankie grabs his arm, pulls him back just as a large raindrop plops to the ground. “You’ll be soaked by the time you get there, never mind we’re rivals; yeesh… I’m sure Kyle can find something for ya to do, okay? Let’s go talk to him.”

Frankie goes for the door, and Sam follows; just as Sam is about to step into the building, he catches Frankie grinning at him. “What?”

Frankie chuckles. “A brother? Man, I wanna hear all about him.”

Sam wags a finger. “No; you leave Nathan out of this.”

Frankie follows Sam inside, down the main hall, and to the back section of the building. “Aw, but a smaller Sam Morgan? Gosh, what havoc you could wreak, Sammy boy.”

“Stop calling me that; Nathan ain’t joining, so drop it.”

Of course, Frankie doesn’t listen, and by the time he’s told half the gang measuring out white powder in the back room, Sam’s been offered seven different odd jobs for a fairly good pay each; he glares at Frankie for the rest of the day, when he’s stacking bins in the backroom or inventorying the latex gloves and packaging plastic.

When the day is out, Sam’s already made back nearly half of what he had to put down at the library; he is thankful that he was able to make it all back, somewhat begrudgingly grateful to Frankie for wagging his tongue everywhere, but he still feels a bit upset at having to share that one piece of information he held so close. Ah well, he thinks as he neatly folds the bills into his wallet; he can at least afford the HotWheels and a sweater for Nathan.

He hurries back to the orphanage with a skip in his step, excited for the coming days; he always tries to make birthdays special, for Nathan. It’s the one day that belong solely to the kid; he deserves to be spoiled rotten. Hmm, maybe Sam can squeeze in a slice of cake from the corner store with any left over money; if not, he can always steel it but he tries not to steel things for Nathan’s birthday. Somehow, it makes the present seem less special, less genuine.

He enters the orphanage compound like any other normal day, drenched nearly to the bone, and only shivering slightly from the cold wind; Sister Meredith scolds him for tracking water everywhere before getting distracted by a pair of squabbling kids in the corner. He slips past her easily enough, and squeaks his way up the flight of stairs to the dormitory he and Nathan share with a few other kids; he pops his head into the room, big grin in place, expecting to see a shaggy head bent over his crisp notes and drawings.

Instead, an empty room greets him; he frowns, steps in closer. Nathan’s bed, one of the last ones in the room, pressed against a window Sam traded for him so he could see the sun rise and set, is made up perfectly; a fresh set of sheets are tucked neatly, and Sam knows for a fact Nathan didn’t make his bed this morning and none of the other beds are freshly made up. Sam scans he room; the four books, ones on Russian and American history, are missing from the window sill, and Sam opens the dresser drawer to a screw rolling across the wood. Nathan’s clothes are gone, his notebooks—always carefully tucked beneath shirts—are not there, and Sam drops to his knees, pressing his temple to the floor. He scans beneath the beds, in case Nathan is hiding, and instead finds Nathan’s favorite non-academic book—Treasure Island—and grabs it, standing quickly.

There are footsteps out in the hallway, and Sam, panicking, calls out.

“Nathan!”

It’s Sister Catherine; she looks in, takes a delicate step forward. “Samuel; you have to dry off before you drench everyone!”

“Where’s Nathan?”

She folds her hands. “He was blessed with a home today.”

Sam can’t breathe. “What?”

“He’s being fostered, Samuel.”

“No… No, no, he can’t be _fostered_.” That nearly always led to adoption. “He’s my brother.”

“He has a wonderfully kind family to go home to now—”

“I’M HIS FAMILY!” Sam doesn’t often, if ever, raise his voice to ladies, let alone a sister of the orphanage; but they can’t just take his baby brother away. He didn’t even get to say goodbye, to fight, to run and hide so no one could ever separate them.

Sister Catherine blinks, unfolds her hands, and glides for the door. “You are no good for him, Samuel; in and out of juvenile hall, always skirting the law. It’s good for Nathan to have stability for once; he doesn’t need you poisoning him anymore.”

With that, she leaves; Sam stands in the center of the dormitory, clutching Treasure Island in his hands, and he reminds himself to breathe. Deep breath in, soothingly out; gentle palpitations of his heart, he smooths his thumb across a dog eared corner of the book, and pretends the water dripping onto the book is from his hair not his eyes.

Her words cut deep; she’s always had that effect on the children here. She speaks everything they loathe, they fear, they cower from; he chokes on a sob, scuffs the end of his sleeve across his nose, and sniffles. His hair is dripping, but it’s not that that tips off his lashes and down to the pages in his hand.

“Oh god,” he swears, holding the book away from him; what will Nathan say if he ruins his favorite book? “I’m so sorry, Nathan…”

In a house half way across town, white picket fence in the front yard, a beautiful wrap around porch, thick glass windows and a cute little garage attached, Nathan spits toothpaste into the sink and pads quickly into the room he’s been told to stay in; he doesn’t understand why the sisters let him go. He told them he had to wait for Sam, that he couldn’t go without Sam, without at least saying goodbye first. He understood, there was no stopping what was happening, but he could stall, he could pretend he had more clothes to pack than he did, and his complaints of not being able to find Treasure Island were true.

He left without Sam, and he left without Robert Louise Stevenson; he left empty and hollow and scared.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d feared never seeing Sam again; there came a time, when Sam kept being carted off to juvie or some correctional facility, a home for disturbed youth, there came a time when Nathan stopped worrying. Because Sam always came back, but now Sam was lost and the most Nathan could do was refuse the macaroni and cheese Mrs Anderson made for dinner.

He scurries into the room they’ve offered him; the carpet is plush, the bed unused, the sheets crisp from the dryer, but Nathan isn’t comfortable. He wants to be in the drafty orphanage, by the window, listening to Sam read to the room or weave a story that they’ve all, miraculously, never heard before. That’s what Nathan wants.

The door creaks open with a soft knock and Mrs Anderson—and she’s trying, she is, and Nathan feels a bit guilty for not even wanting to give her a chance—smiles at his cautiously.

“Hey, sweetie; how are you settling in?”

Nathan chews his cheek. “I’m used to having a story told.”

“Oh, ok.” She steps in further, glancing at the bookshelf. “What would you like to hear?”

Nathan shakes his head and scoots away. “It’s always Sam, Sam always tells a story; it has to be Sam.”

Mrs Anderson backs off. “Oh, um; well, sweetie, he’s not here.”

Nathan glares at the bed sheets; it’s dinosaur themed. Nathan’s never been incredibly interested in dinosaurs. “It’s gotta be Sam,” he mumbles. “It’s always Sam.”

She tucks her hair behind her ear and crouches. “I know; I’m sorry, I’m sure this is super scary and you’re probably confused. I’m sure we can visit Sam, at one point in time.”

“I want Sam!”

Mrs Anderson flinches. “Nathan,” she scolds; downstairs, Mr Anderson raises from the couch and goes for the stairs.

“Love?”

“Everything’s alright, Jack!” She calls back, except Nathan is blinking tears away and his shoulders are beginning to shake. She moves forward to comfort him.

Mr Anderson is just going back to the couch, to the late night game of hockey on the television, when there comes a knock on the door; he goes to answer it, peeks out the peephole, and sees some scrawny teenager standing there. The poor kid is huffing and puffing, drenched from head to toe, with a backpack slung over his shoulders and a book clutched in his hands; he raises his fist and pounds the door again.

Mr Anderson swings the door open. “Hey, are you lost?”

The teenager opens his mouth, but Nathan’s crying grows louder and the boy’s eyes widen before narrowing and Jack never saw the punch coming; he falls to the ground, and the teenager is two feet in his house.

“What the hell—”

“Nathan!” the kid calls up the stairs, glancing down at Jack. “Nathan, where are you?”

Feet pound on the floor boards and Jack rolls to his feet, sees Nathan’s grinning face at the top of the stairs as he starts running down them.

“Sam!”

The teenager, Sam, bends at the knees and fits his hands beneath Nathan’s arms, swings the boy off the ground, and immediately turns for the door.

“Now you hold on a minute!” Jack’s nose is bleeding; geez, that kid can throw a punch! “You let my son go!”

“He’s not yours!” Sam snarls and Jack is able to trick him into the corner; Nathan is still clutched to his chest, held tight there, and he squirms to watch the action.

The boy frowns. “Sam, did you punch Mr Anderson?”

“Sh, Nathan; we’ll be half way to Canada in a bit, dontchu worry about a thing.”

Nathan shakes his head. “But they’re nice, Sam.”

“I said sh.”

“Samuel,” Mrs Anderson trips down the stairs in her hurry. “You must be Samuel? We’ve heard so much about you!”

“I’m calling the cops.” Jack turns for the kitchen, but Lucy catches his arm.

“Not now, dear,” she says, turning back to the boys in her foyer. “Why don’t we all sit down and a have a calm conversation; would you like that, Nathan?”

Sam tries to angle his brother away from her, blinks rain water from his eyes; Nathan nods.

“Sam, they made mac and cheese for dinner.”

Sam pats his back. “That’s nice.”

The following few hours are spent in an awkward dance; the Andersons try to be accommodating, but Sam insults and jabs every chance he gets, still bothered by them having taken his brother away. Nathan flips through Treasure Island and repeats his favorite passages to anyone willing to listen. Lucy scrubs a hand over her face when the clock chimes ten and hardly any progress has been made; there’s no getting through to either one, she can tell. They have a bond that she doubts can be broken, can be strained by separation, and there’s no way she nor her husband can currently handle two children, let alone a pair as closely knit as these two.

There’s just no space for anyone else between them; from the way Sam keeps an arm around Nathan, to the way Nathan asks Sam to “do the voices, you do the voices so good” and Sam doesn’t even glance at the book to know what the characters are saying.

She drives them back to the orphanage in the morning, a little heartbroken, but comforted that they’ll always have each other.


End file.
